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RABBIT (a la Poulette)
Cut up a fresh young rabbit into neat joints convenient for serving. Lay these in a pie-dish, cover with equal parts of milk and water, and let them soak for an hour or two; this will render them juicy and tender. Drain them, put them into a stewpan, pour over them as much boiling white stock or water as will cover them, and add a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of white pepper, a bunch of parsley, two small button onions, a blade of mace, and six or eight mushrooms. Let the sauce boil up, then draw the saucepan to the side, and let its contents simmer very gently indeed for half an hour. Take up the meat, and set it aside for a short time. Strain the sauce, and boil quickly until it is reduced one-third. Stir into it two table-spoonfuls of thick cream, put in the pieces of rabbit, and let them remain until they are hot through, but the sauce must not boil after the meat is put in a second time. Arrange the rabbit in a dish, pour the sauce over it, and garnish with parsley and cut lemon. A glassful of light wine may be added to the sauce or not. Time altogether, two hours. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A gentle white stew that lives or dies on temperature control: nothing here should ever reach a rolling boil once the rabbit is in the pan.
- The hinge: no boilingRabbit is very lean and seizes into dry strings above a bare simmer, and the cream will split if the reduced sauce boils. Keep the liquid at the point where bubbles only just break the surface, and when the meat goes back in, hold it at about 160-170F until heated through.
- The milk-and-water soakAn hour or two in equal parts milk and water was a common recommendation for rabbit and veal, partly to draw out blood and keep the flesh pale for a white dish. It is optional with modern farmed rabbit, which is already mild, but it does no harm; refrigerate while soaking rather than leaving it on the counter.
- Timing for today's rabbitHalf an hour suits a genuinely young wild rabbit. A 2.5-3 lb farmed rabbit usually wants 40-50 minutes, and the forelegs and saddle will be done well before the hind legs, so pull pieces as they give. The "two hours altogether" in the original counts the soak.
- Blade of maceThe dried outer covering of nutmeg, sold in blades or ground. One blade is roughly a quarter to a half teaspoon of ground mace; if using ground, add it towards the end of the simmer rather than the start, as its aroma suffers with long cooking.
- Button onions and white stockButton onions are small pickling onions, about an inch across; two shallots substitute cleanly. White stock means an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, so use a pale unsalted chicken stock and hold back on the teaspoon of salt until after the sauce is reduced by a third and concentrated.
- Cream"Thick cream" of the period was roughly today's heavy cream. Two tablespoons is a light hand; three or four will not spoil it. Stir it into the hot reduced sauce off direct heat.
- YieldTwo or three portions, as stated, which matches one small rabbit. Serve with rice, boiled new potatoes or plain buttered noodles to take the sauce.
- The wineA glass of dry white, added to the reduction and boiled a minute or two before the cream goes in, sharpens what is otherwise a very soft-flavored dish.
A la poulette names a sauce, not a bird: a pale velouté-type sauce finished with cream, egg yolk and lemon, most familiar in French cooking with tripe, mussels, sweetbreads and frogs' legs. The name is generally traced to the idea of a sauce pale and delicate enough for a young chicken, though the version here drops the yolks and relies on reduction and cream alone, which is why the warning against boiling matters twice over. Rabbit belonged squarely in this register in late Victorian Britain: it was cheap and plentiful, and the recipe carries a shilling-and-pence costing.